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Post by lew on May 17, 2009 18:11:48 GMT -6
Just remember-when the Indians did it,it was called mutilation. When the Government did it-it was called Enhanced Body Modification.
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Post by conz on May 17, 2009 20:04:12 GMT -6
Just remember-when the Indians did it,it was called mutilation. When the Government did it-it was called Enhanced Body Modification. LOL...luckily, the "government" NEVER did this. You may find where some Soldiers once in a while got carried away, but such action was considered barbaric and uncivilized, and unbecoming modern humans. So the Army refrained from it. Never stopped the Warriors, though, until the Army forceably stopped the practice. Clair
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Post by conz on May 17, 2009 20:12:17 GMT -6
you're deaf to the keening of dying women and children and unarmed men just to make idiot statements. No...I'm not deaf to it at all. I abhor it. I wish women and children were never killed in warfare. What I don't see are war crimes. Women and children dead, in and of itself, never makes for a charge of a war crime. You have to find out the circumstances and motivations to find a crime. Happens all the time in warfare...happens this week in some Afghanistan village, and tomorrow in an Iraqi village, and next week in a Nigerian or Congolese village... There were many Indian survivors at Wounded Knee. The Army captured them, fed them, protected them, and moved them to their own people at the reservation. Did you know that? Does it make a difference to your judgment? No, it does NOT make a war crime. Why do you think so? You can't tell me a reason, except that innocents were killed. Killed innocents DOES NOT MAKE FOR A CRIME. It happens all the time in warfare without any chargeable crime. It is rather NORMAL in warfare among a population...it is unavoidable. And it has everything to do with resisting arrest. No Warriors could be allowed to escape...they MUST be tracked down and destroyed or captured. Women and children get in the way here, too, much like the Taliban hide behind their women and children when they move, daring the Army to bomb them. We do....today just like we did then. They should have studied the history of the U.S. Army better. I am a Soldier. Do you think all Soldiers are sick? Is any Soldier who caused a woman or child to die, sick, in your book? Then you will never understand...you REFUSE to see the truth. I can't help you if you don't try. And I'll never understand your point of view if you don't try. It is not about facts, you see...it is about values. Clair
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Post by bc on May 17, 2009 23:15:26 GMT -6
Just wondering: Did anyone get waterboarded during the Indian Wars?
bc
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Post by conz on May 18, 2009 10:35:52 GMT -6
Just wondering: Did anyone get waterboarded during the Indian Wars? bc I don't know, but I have, during escape and evasion training. <g> I had a flashback to it the other day, when my dentist was trying out a new contraption on me that fits in your mouth, covers the back of your throat, and blows air down it. Felt just like waterboarding...thought I was going to suffocate. It took me several minutes to calm down and get used to breathing around it before I knew I wasn't going to lose breath. Clair
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Post by bc on May 18, 2009 14:06:12 GMT -6
Just wondering: Did anyone get waterboarded during the Indian Wars? bc I don't know, but I have, during escape and evasion training. <g> I had a flashback to it the other day, when my dentist was trying out a new contraption on me that fits in your mouth, covers the back of your throat, and blows air down it. Felt just like waterboarding...thought I was going to suffocate. It took me several minutes to calm down and get used to breathing around it before I knew I wasn't going to lose breath. Clair Now that you mention it, I had a similar experience. My hav fever has my nose plugged up most of the time. That and a couple deviated septums from a couple scraps I've been in that hindsight says I should have walked away from (but not me). Anyway after about 3 nasal surgeries while in the army by army doctors wanting to practice their plastic surgery skills before they ETS on us soldiers, I primarily breathe through my mouth. They had a dental group at the state fair last year that was doing teeth whitening at a booth. She stuck this double sided mouthpiece with their whitener added into my mouth and told me to clamp down. I about lost it cause my nose wasn't ready to take over breathing. Took a while to clear and prepare my sinuses before I could do it for 30 minutes. Had a couple near drowning experiences. One was a panic situation where I jumped into water over my head when I was a kid and the other was at the north shore of Oahu where I got past the surf and found the current was carrying me parallel to the beach and no matter how hard I swam I couldn't get through it and then I got very tired. Treading water for a while and one strong effort got me to the surf that carried me back to shore. They didn't have life guards then. I got out so far because of a perpendicular sand bar that I could stand on but the current moved me off of it. bc
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Post by conz on May 18, 2009 14:32:17 GMT -6
Yeah...that's it...it is a very odd psychological feeling, when you can breath, but it seems like you can't. Closest thing to it is your "gag reflex" sensation.
Clair
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Post by wolfgang911 on May 18, 2009 14:45:30 GMT -6
After Crazy Horse’s surrender, he “daily grew more insolent and intractable, thinking perhaps that he could manage matters better to suit himself… the whole interpretation of KingsleyBray and especially this quote is higly tendancious and not historical. Who is KingsleyBray to read the thoughts of Crazy Horse and portray him so as an egocentric bully. Anyway the numbers he cites are debatable and other historians give other numbers. Anyway if crazy Horse was so unpopular why arrets the guy and whu spotted tail red cloud and all those loafat oeo
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Post by wolfgang911 on May 18, 2009 14:45:50 GMT -6
finish>>
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Post by wolfgang911 on May 18, 2009 14:50:42 GMT -6
finish >> sorry
Anyway if crazy Horse was so unpopular why arrest the guy and why spotted tail, red cloud, and all those loafers were so jealous and complotting to crush him
I'm not comparing Crazy Horse to Jesus but if your standard of despisal or being a loser is being alone in the end... it is more a standard of human tragedy all great men had to face
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Post by conz on May 19, 2009 6:50:55 GMT -6
I'm not comparing Crazy Horse to Jesus but if your standard of despisal or being a loser is being alone in the end... it is more a standard of human tragedy all great men had to face Yes, it is. My problem is how you can hold up for a good example a man who lost everything, and who got a lot of people killed while fighting for NOTHING. He had no goal, no hope of winning. As I've said, it is fine to get yourself killed for just the glory, if you want, but don't take your families down with you. Now if he had a purpose and a goal where he calculated that his people's sacrifices would result in a more beneficial future, I would think him one of the greatest leaders on our continent. But without this moral factor, he is just a great Warrior, but not a good moralist. And to me, ability to be moral is more important than ability to wage war. Clair
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Post by Melani on May 19, 2009 10:29:37 GMT -6
Well, conz, what should you do when the only alternative for your families is imprisonment and slow starvation? I'm sure the Lakota were very much divided in their opinions of what should be done at this point. I think Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse are admired today by both whites and Indians because they fought so hard--Americans tend to admire that sort of thing, even when it is not sensible.
Interesting point about 9/11--if Al Qaida considers themselves to be at war with the U.S., then the Twin Towers would have been a legitimate target, just as various cities in Germany were considered legitimate targets in WWII. And please, don't anybody get offended or think that I am condoning the destruction of the Twin Towers--it's just a theoretical statement. I realize that it's a very recent hot-button sort of thing, and I know people who lost friends and family there. Like I said before, war is very nasty.
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Post by crzhrs on May 19, 2009 10:43:15 GMT -6
Morality is in the eye of the beholder.
Do you actually think CH & SB were out for glory? Both men were past their prime as warriors or even counting coup. CH was never a glory seeker and by all accounts was quiet and didn't take part in all the other demonstrations of the average warrior.
In fact many people considered him different and that may be why he had such a large following who were willing to stay out and risk it all.
I doubt that CH or SB did not care about the woman, children or elderly. Indian culture was not as cruel as you make it sound. If one starved all starved . . . if one had food all had food.
As for CH taking away the horses & belongings of those who wanted to go in to the reservation . . . it was because he knew that once there the soldiers would take everything from them. Might as well keep it for those who continued to resist.
I think you are failing to see that Indians were/are human with all the concern, care, and love for their families as you and I.
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Post by conz on May 19, 2009 11:45:28 GMT -6
Well, conz, what should you do when the only alternative for your families is imprisonment and slow starvation? I'm sure the Lakota were very much divided in their opinions of what should be done at this point. I think Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse are admired today by both whites and Indians because they fought so hard--Americans tend to admire that sort of thing, even when it is not sensible. Yes, I'm sure you are right, here. Now if you could make an argument that whenever the reservation became intolerable, the only way to get Washington's attention was to go on the warpath, and even if you lose some of your women and children, at least overall the reservation gets treated better in the aftermath, so now you might have a moral justification for that fighting. There was always this element in Red Cloud's thinking...he had his protests and movements, although not to the extreme that Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse took it. I don't really see this as an element in the "wild band's" motivation, though. From Bray, Hyde, and many other's writings, I get the sense that they were mostly stubborn and afraid, and just too independent to live on the rez. I get that...what I abhor is how their families suffered for it. I'm all about the women and children, as you have seen consistently. They are the ONLY reason Warriors exist, white or red, in my book. But that may be a more modern and Western perspective. I don't get the sense in Native society that the family was most important. Too many of these stories make it look like the Warrior is most important in the tribe. In Western civilization, the MOTHERS are the most important in our society. I understand. But as I said before, my standard for the morality of using deadly force against civilians (putting criminality aside for the moment...they are separate), is that they can only be incidental to what you are trying to target. The target cannot be the civilians, and you have to avoid killing them if you can. But you can morally target the means the enemy is using to fight you, as long as you believe you have some "good" come out of that attack to make up for the sins of killing innocents. Now one could argue that it really was Wall Street that they targeted, and that by so doing, they felt they could get the West to back out of their MidEastern interests. In this case, I would say that the attack was morally justified, if not legal by Western laws of war (which don't apply to Muslims, anyway). Now we in the West knew that such an attack would never benefit the radical Islamists...it wouldn't really hurt us, and it would cause us to send armies into the heart of the Muslim world. Disaster for Muslims ensues. But they may not have guessed that this would happen, so they thought the lamentable deaths of all our innocent civilians was worth the chance to rid the MidEast of Western influence. I don't get the sense, though, that many MidEasterners, be they radical Islamists or just your man-on-the-street anti-Semites, were very distraught at all the women and children they killed on 9/11, do you? And in that lack of distress, is the symptom of their immorality. Now apply that to the Native Americans...where were they distressed at the white women and children their Warriors killed or kidnapped? Clair
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Post by crzhrs on May 19, 2009 12:35:10 GMT -6
<There was always this element in Red Cloud's thinking...he had his protests and movements, although not to the extreme that Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse took it>
SB & CH never lived on reservations and considered themselves under no legal authority since they never signed treaties.
And that is one of the biggest issues regarding signing of treaties with "chiefs" who did not represent all the people, only their own bands.
<Too many of these stories make it look like the Warrior is most important in the tribe. In Western civilization, the MOTHERS are the most important in our society>
Indian women were in charge of the villages, moving them, its location, and ran them like most modern-day woman run their households and held sway over many civil decisions.
Most White woman in the US had no rights for centuries . . . they could be legally beaten, could not own property, could not vote, were arrested if they demonstrated for women's rights, could not choose what they could do with their bodies, etc., etc.
In fact Indian woman had far more rights than their White counterparts and could throw out a husband any time they wanted.
<Too many of these stories make it look like the Warrior is most important in the tribe>
I think you should start reading about Native American society and stop believing the stereotypical nonsense of Indians as sub-humans incapable of loving each other and constantly at war with one another.
I recommend you read Mystic Warriors of the Great Plains or better yet . . . Dog Soldiers, Bear Men, and Buffalo Women: A Study of the Societies and Cults of the Plains Indians (both by Thomas Mails)
It may enlighten you regarding just how "human" Indians were and still are.
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